soup

No, but really. Multiple nights under 30 degrees F this week = the natives are LOSING it. We live in South Carolina, after all. The south. Warm. Stuffy. No fall. Lots of summer. Sweat. Humidity. You get it.

So when it’s this cold (and, yes, I know some of you have way colder lives than this, I understand how different climates work), and dark at 4pm, and we’re decorating for Christmas between snuggling with our newborn and battling our toddler, we totally completely absolutely for sure need a perfect soup to get us through the winter.

This is definitely that. It’s similar in flavor to the sausage rice casserole from Jay’s youth, but with a broth base and just a little bit of cream and cornstarch to thicken things up. We use real wild rice for that chewy whole grain texture, and the added bonus of simmering the soup for long enough to cook the rice (about an hour) is that the house smells GREAT while this is cooking. I use local sausage, but you can use any kind you like or even ground chicken to keep this super light.

Happy week of Halloween! We have to have a soup this week, right? I adore soup all the time for one very good reason: leftovers are the best of all the food groups. Anything fried gets mushy, bread-based stuff never reheats well, microwaved leftover veggies are satanic…you get it. Soup always works fresh or reheated, so in these little-kid years if I have time to cook extra on the weekends or early in the day I make soup and then am DONE for a meal later on, usually in the evening when everything has gone to hell, toddler-behaviorally-speaking.

Last year our go-to soup was this sausage kale number, which is still probably one of my favorite things I make ever. This minestrone is on the same playing field with the combination of veggies, meat, and noodles that work so well together. Green beans and beef to me are super delicious, and the base of the soup is tomatoes, stock, and garlic for extra flavor. You could absolutely make this vegetarian with beans instead of beef, or use both for an extra shot of protein.

Because apparently we are a sick house and I only want to eat broth-based things ever.

Our week of healing is going well, thanks to incredible amounts of support from our friends and family and narcotics for Jay. I, on the other hand, have gotten some kind of cold-on-top-of-a-cold and can’t stop craving salty brothy things to make my throat feel better and my nose unclog slightly. Doing a surgery recovery with a toddler while sick and doing regular work has been a struggle; we feel like we.just.can’t.quite. catch up on sleep and housework, but we’re getting there, one day at a time.

The good news is that the Porta Potty was picked up from our FRONT YARD where it has been for nearly 6 months, so small victories, you know?

So this soup is part three in the “let’s eat green stuff” accidental spring series – we had a salad, then pasta, and now this soup! I adore farro for the texture, it’s so chewy and holds up well in soups; I buy the quick cooking kind at Trader Joe’s. With that, this entire soup comes together in less than half an hour, and fresh herbs and lemon spritzes all over the place wake up the entire bowl for the warm weather. As a bonus, this recipe is vegan if you use veggie stock and dairy free + probably gluten free and paleo and Whole30 friendly if you check labels carefully, which I don’t.

I adore this, is what you should know first. Everyone else adores this, is a very close second.

A million years ago when I started to like cooking but didn’t have a huge skillset yet, I watched A LOT of Food Network, which morphed into me watching Rachael Ray nearly daily, which was probably a strange thing to do at age 23 or something. I learned a ton, though, and often mimicked recipes I saw on her and other’s shows. This chicken chili was inspired by a talk show, is what you should know.

In the last ten years or so (why. how.), I’ve made versions of this chili over and over again, to great results and very few leftovers each time. The concept is simple: some kind of peppers that you roast yourself, chicken/garlic/onion, white beans, canned green chiles, stock, done. Sometimes I add lots of different types of peppers, sometimes an extra jalapeno or two. Sometimes I use leftover shredded chicken, sometimes I use ground, sometimes I poach and shred my own and use the poaching liquid instead of stock.

The end result is hugely flavorful each time, and the balance of flavors + nutrition is so satisfying here. Toppings are a must, as with any Mexican-inspired dish, and this should probably definitely be included in your weekend – this weekend if it’s cold, or in two weeks for Cinco de Mayo! OR OR OR you make a double batch now and freeze half for Cinco. Meal prep.

Actually, it’s going to be 75 degrees here today, but climate change is a MYTH because it’s still super cold some places, that’s how that works. So! If you are in a colder climate or just love cozy foods (me), here’s your new chili for the season! Jay finished Whole30 in January, but this is something we’ve made a few times mainly because I don’t actually love beans, so having extra veggies and beef in chili is GREAT for me. The liquid aminos here substitute Worcestershire sauce, and truthfully COCONUT aminos would be even better to be truly Whole30 compliant, but this is what we had so we went with it.

I’m not a massive soup person, but I’m a massive stew/chili person (or maybe I’m just massive). I find them to be so hearty and cozy, and they work so well when made in advance. We’ve been working three or more nights a week recently, so cooking “for” dinner ends up with us eating at 9pm or so, which is just ridiculous. Exhausted doesn’t begin to describe how we’re doing, so dishes like this that can be made well in advance but not feel like leftovers are my favorite thing right now.